Suspected Muslim insurgents staged the most deadly attack in years in Thailand's restive south, killing 11 people and wounding 110 with car bombs that targeted Saturday shoppers just before lunchtime.

A first batch of explosives planted inside a parked pickup truck ripped through an area of restaurants and shops in a busy area of Yala city, a main commercial hub of Thailand's restive southern provinces, said district police chief Col. Kritsada Kaewchandee.

About 20 minutes later, just as onlookers gathered at the blast site, a second car bomb exploded, causing the majority of casualties.. . .

More than 5,000 people have been killed in Thailand's three southernmost provinces, Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, since an Islamist insurgency flared in January 2004.

Canada: Muslim stores caught selling books teaching how to beat your wife and usurp the West

See a previous report here for details on "A Gift to Muslim Couple", a book which contains advice for newlywed Muslim men on how to discipline their brides. The methods include; slapping, ear pulling, scolding, withholding money and confining them to the home.

An Islamic bookstore in east Toronto is selling books that urge Muslims to usurp the Western world and install an Islamic State in its place.

The books, written by deceased Islamic scholar Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi – are available at the Islamic Circle of North America bookstore in Scarborough.

“Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation that rules it,” Maududi wrote in Jihad in Islam. “Islam requires the earth – not just a portion – but the whole planet.”

French police detained 19 people Friday as they launched a crackdown on suspected Islamist extremists in cities around the country, the French president said, promising more raids to come.

Tensions are high following a spate of killings in southern France by a radical Islamist that left seven people dead and two wounded and ended up with police killing the gunman last week after a 32-hour standoff.

President Nicolas Sarkozy gave no details about the reasons for Friday's arrests or what the detainees were suspected of.

"It's in connection with a form of Islamist radicalism," Sarkozy said on Europe-1 radio. "There will be other operations that will continue and that will allow us to expel from our national territory a certain number of people who have no reason to be here.". . .

In Nantes, the head of Forsane Alizza, a radical Muslim group that formed two years ago, was among the detained.

Indonesian police raided what they said was a terrorist safehouse on the outskirts of Jakarta Friday, March 30, killing two suspected terrorists. This is the third event in 3 weeks, showing continued activity and highlighting the evolution of Jemaah Islamiyah or JI, Al-Qaeda’s arm in Southeast Asia.

JI is the terrorist network that carried out the deadliest attacks in Indonesia, including the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people.

On Thursday, March 29, Indonesia’s top counter-terrorism official, Ansyaad Mbai, linked a package bomb in Paris delivered to the Indonesian embassy on March 21 to this same terrorist network. Mbai identified French national Frederic C Jean Salvi as a suspect. Salvi has been on Indonesia’s wanted list since 2010, discovered during investigations into JI.

“There were strong indications he was involved in the bombing at our mission in Paris,” said Mbai.

This comes after the March 18 shootout in Bali, which killed 5 suspected terrorists. Mbai said the men planned to bomb targets, including the “La Vida Loca” bar.

As global funding dries up, more cells - once part of JI"s network - are turning to crime. Police said the suspects were planning to rob money changers and jewelers to raise money for its attacks.

A prosecutor has demanded a seven-year prison sentence for an abusive ex-husband and nine years for his beaten ex-wife, who bit her ex-husband's hand while he was hitting her, in Ankara.

The Habertürk daily reported on Thursday that both of the ex-spouses filed complaints against each other with the Ankara Public Prosecutor's Office on charges of violence. The prosecutors demanded seven years for Oğuz Berksun, who is a professor at Ankara University, and nine years for psychiatrist, Elif Usal.

"These people's positions and statements calling for hatred and violence seriously damage republican principles and, in the current context, represent a serious threat to public order," said the statement from Foreign Minister Alain Juppe and Interior Minister Claude Gueant.

The ministers also voiced "regret" that prominent Swiss intellectual Tariq Ramadan has been invited to the April 6-9 meeting organized by the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF).

They said his "positions and statements are against the republican spirit, which does not do any service to France's Muslims.". . .

His grandfather founded Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, of which his father was a senior member exiled by former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Islamization of Indonesia continues: Wearing mini-skirts to be officially defined as pornographic

The mini-skirts is pornographic, according to Indonesian Religious Affairs Minister, Suryadharma Ali.

Skirts hemmed above the knee will be included in a government task force's definition of pornography, according to news reports.

"There must be a set of universal criteria to define something as pornographic, of which one will be when someone wears a skirt above the knee," Suryadharma, said on the margins of a Lower House hearing, the Jakarta Post reported on Wednesday.

The task force is creating a working definition of pornography that the government will rely on in the future to enforce indecency laws.

After standard has been set, the task force would apply it nationwide across all ethnicities, he said, according to the report.

Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono set up the task force as part of an effort to implement a 2008 law that aims to curb the distribution of pornographic material.

France: Terrorist sent video montage of killings set to music & readings from Qur'an to Al-Jazeera

FRENCH police have copies of videos made by an Islamist extremist killer during his recent shooting spree in and near the southern city of Toulouse, police sources said today.

"It's a video montage of the various killings set to music and readings from the Koran," the source said, adding that the footage had been sent to the Paris office of the pan-Arabic satellite network Al-Jazeera.

Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent who was killed last week in a police siege after killing seven people, had previously boasted of filming his killings.

Extremists have posted “detailed instructions” on a website with links to the terror group on how launch an attack this summer’s games in the capital.

One member, called Abu Hija Ansari claimed the cyanide should be mixed with an unidentified hand cream so it could be absorbed through human skin, according to The Sun.

Writing in Arabic, he said anyone planning such an attack should wear "medical gloves" as they produce their lethal mixture.. .

Also last week it emerged that two convicted terrorists, including one involved in the “liquids” plot to blow up trans-Atlantic passenger jets, were back on the streets after being released from prison.

With France's deadly attacks, Islamic terrorism has apparently struck once more in the heart of Europe — and authorities say there's a dangerous twist: the emergence of homegrown extremists operating independent of any known networks, making them hard to track and stop.

"We have a different kind of jihadist threat emerging, and it's getting stronger," said Europol chief Rob Wainwright in a telephone interview from The Hague. "It is much more decentralized and harder to track.". . .
"We have one law for war, one law for peace, but we don't have a law for the current situation," said Alain Chouet, a former intelligence director at France's DGSE spy agency. "If we stopped (Merah) three weeks ago, what would people have said? 'Why are you stopping him? What did he do?' "

German officials expressed the same frustration in the case of Arid Uka, a Kosovo Albanian who gunned down two American airmen and wounded two others last year at the Frankfurt airport. Aside from illegally acquiring a handgun, the 22-year-old, who was convicted last month, had committed no crime until he shot his first victim in the back of the head.

Six men from Oxford have been remanded in custody after appearing in court in connection with an investigation into child exploitation in the city.. . .

Thames Valley Police, investigating claims 24 girls were being exploited, arrested 13 men following raids on properties in the city on Thursday.. . .

• Mr Jamil is charged with four counts of rape, two counts of arranging the prostitution of a child, one count of making a threat to kill and one count of possession of cocaine with intent to supply.• Anjum Dogar is charged with one count of conspiring to rape a child, one of arranging the prostitution of a child and one count of trafficking.• Akhtar Dogar faces three charges of rape, one count of conspiring to rape a child, three counts of arranging the prostitution of a child, one count of making a threat to kill and one count of trafficking.• Mr Ahmed faces 10 charges of engaging in sexual activity with a child.• Bassan Karrar is charged with one count of rape.• Mohammed Karrar will face two counts of conspiracy to rape a child and one count of supplying a class A controlled drug to a child.

France: Islamic terrorism leads to crack down on visits to terrorist and hate websites

Following a hate-crime killing spree by a self-proclaimed extremist, France is cracking down on visits to terrorist and hate websites.

President Nicolas Sarkozy decreed it illegal to frequent Web sites that promote terrorism or hate, tech site CNET reported.

"From now on, any person who habitually consults Web sites that advocate terrorism or that call for hatred and violence will be criminally punished. France will not tolerate forced recruitment or ideological indoctrination on its soil," Sarkozy said in a televised address, CNET cited a Reuters report as saying.

The move came after a 32-hour standoff between a French SWAT team and Mohamed Merah, 23, who was wanted for killing three French paratroopers, three Jewish schoolchildren, and a rabbi.

UK: Elderly woman dies after Muslim nurse refused to help as he was busy praying

Alzheimer's sufferer Dorothy Griffiths, 87, was found sitting down after staff heard a bang and a carer went to the office for help to lift her.

But agency nurse Abdul Bhutto, who was in charge, said they would have to wait.

Carer Zoe Shaw told the Sheffield hearing: "It took between five and ten minutes because he was praying upstairs in the office on his prayer mat. A staff member told me we had to wait for him to finish."

An ambulance was not called for nearly four hours after Mrs Griffiths fell from bed and cut her head and suffered a gash to her hip at the privately-run Valley Park Nursing Home in Wombwell, near Barnsley.

She died later in hospital. Mr Bhutto failed to appear at the inquest and a summons had to be issued for him to attend the resumed hearing later in the year.

France: Murder of French Jewish children & Muslim members of military committed by Muslim Terrorist

The Washington Post and France24 have reported that French police have raided a Toulouse home to arrest the suspect in the shooting deaths of three children and an adult at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France. The suspect, an Algerian-born French citizen, reportedly told the police that he committed the killings “to avenge Palestinian children” – ironic at a moment when Palestinians have been shooting rockets into Israel.. . .
France24 reports that the suspect targeted French Muslim members of the military in his first shootings as “Arab soldiers are prized targets for groups like Al-Qaeda, which regards Muslims who fight for Western armies as traitors.”

Updates:

The gunman alleged to have killed seven people in the French city of Toulouse has been killed by snipers after a 32-hour siege.

Authorities say Mohammed Merah killed a teacher and three children at a Jewish school and three soldiers - and filmed the murders.

The man has claimed affiliation to al-Qaeda and said he acted to "avenge Palestinian children". He also fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan, authorities say

Key points

0030: Welcome to the BBC coverage of the continuing siege in Toulouse where a gunman suspected of killing seven people is holed up - nearly 24 hours after being surrounded by armed police.
It has been generally quiet - not much has happened in the past hour - but now gunshots have been heard at the site of the stand-off.

0155: Still no sign of a full-scale assault on suspect's building. "It's not as simple as that. We are waiting," Toulouse prosecutor Michel Valet says.

0220: All appears quiet around the building where Mohammed Merah has now been holed up for 24 hours. Police attempted to arrest him at around 0300 on Wednesday, but held back when a gun battle erupted, injuring two policemen...

French police have copies of videos made by an Islamist extremist killer during his recent shooting spree in and near the southern city of Toulouse, police sources said today.

"It's a video montage of the various killings set to music and readings from the Koran," the source said, adding that the footage had been sent to the Paris office of the pan-Arabic satellite network Al-Jazeera.

Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent who was killed last week in a police siege after killing seven people, had previously boasted of filming his killings.

French police on Tuesday arrested two men on suspicion of complicity with Islamist terrorist Mohamed Merah, who killed seven people, including a rabbi and three Jewish school children, in the city of Toulouse a year ago.

An anti-terror unit arrested the pair in Toulouse, police officials said, without providing details on their identity, the AFP news agency reported.

Two men aged 19 and 22 were arrested a month earlier on suspicion of assisting Merah, aged 23, who was shot dead in a police siege after killing a rabbi, three Jewish children and three paratroopers outside the Otzar HaTorah Jewish day school.. . .France has seen a 45 percent increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents since the Toulouse shootings.

Key routes in Baghdad were locked down Wednesday as Al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq claimed responsibility for a wave of deadly blasts targeting security for a landmark Arab summit next week.

The tightened measures came a day after nationwide gun and bomb attacks killed 50 people and left 255 others wounded on the anniversary of the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

In a statement posted on jihadist forum Honein, the Islamic State of Iraq declared it was behind the attacks against several "official posts and security and military posts" in the country.. . .
Tuesday's violence rocked 20 towns and cities spanning the northern oil hub of Kirkuk and the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, south of Baghdad, from 7:00 am (0400 GMT), and continued through the day.

The spate of attacks bore the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda, which typically tries to launch coordinated nationwide mass-casualty bombing campaigns.

Australia: Alevi community centre petrol-bombed, sect warned to "testify" Allah is the only god

A petrol-bomb attack on a community centre has prompted fears among Melbourne’s Alevi population they could be targeted with more violence on religious grounds.

Glass bottles containing petrol and set alight were thrown at the front and rear doors of the Alevi Community Council of Australia centre in North Coburg overnight.

No one was inside the centre at the time of the incident, but a centre spokeswoman said the building’s rear door was badly burnt.

Surmeli Aydogan, the council’s community liaison officer, said the centre’s users were also concerned to find notes pinned to the fence threatening Alevis on religious grounds unless they "testified" that Allah was the only god to be worshipped.. . .
Ms Aydogan said the attack had stirred painful memories for some of the city’s Alevi population, many of whom moved to Australia after years of oppression in Turkey.

"We’re an oppressed group and we’ve been denied our rights in Turkey, but we live in Australia," she said.

"We’re Australian Alevis now and this sort of thing happening here brings back memories, particularly for our elderly, of what they went through."

Two terrorist attacks targeted Damascus Saturday morning claiming the lives of 24 people, along with the remains of three other martyrs, while 140 others were injured, including civilian citizens and law enforcement personnel.

The two terrorist attacks, carried out by two booby-trapped cars, targeted two crowded places in the capital: the Customs Square, and the zone linking Baghdad Street to al-Qasaa' Quarter.

A statement of the Interior Ministry said that Damascus was hit on Saturday with two booby-trapped car terrorist attacks carried out by two suicide bombers, which caused the martyrdom of 24 people, while the remains of three other martyrs were found and 140 others were injured, including civilian citizens and law enforcement personnel.

The statement explained that the first explosion took place at 07: 20 am at al-Jamarek (customs) roundabout, and a few minutes later the second explosion occurred in al-Tahrir square that links Baghdad Street with al-Qassaa region.

Police in Libya captured three members of an armed mob that desecrated British war graves in Benghazi – but released them after a few hours because they were ‘too dangerous’.

The extremists, who admitted smashing the gravestones with sledgehammers, belong to an Islamist militia with links to Al Qaeda.

During questioning, police were so nervous they made the men wear blindfolds so they would not be able to identify their interrogators.

‘We had no option but to release them, even though they admitted criminal damage,’ a senior officer told The Mail on Sunday.

‘We have no control over these men, they are too dangerous, they have more weapons. We have arrested members of this brigade in the past and their fellow fighters raided the police station to get them out.’

Israeli pro-Palestinian activists: We are being sexually harassed in the West Bank

Female activists accuse leftist organizations of belittling cases of harassment by Palestinians for the sake of the struggle against the occupation; Palestinian activist: It is unacceptable that Israeli or foreign women that come to protest in solidarity with us be harassed.

"Hi everyone, I'm writing this here because I'm not really sure when the next meeting will be. At the demonstration today (February 10, 2012) in Kfar a-Dik, I noticed looks and finger pointing from the shabab (nickname for young Palestinians) that made me feel some discomfort. They talked amongst themselves, and not with me, but the word that came up quite a lot was ‘slut,’ with glances directed toward me. When I met A. and H. (two men), I told them about this, and H. stayed by my side. Despite this, there was some ‘accidental’ touching, and some incidents in which people called me a ‘slut.’ In the end of the day, it was a very unpleasant experience.”. . .

This correspondence, along with other testimonies obtained by Haaretz, tells of a wider phenomenon of sexual harassment and assault of Israeli and foreign protesters in the West Bank. In the past two years, at least six incidents were recorded in the West Bank and East Jerusalem: two in Sheikh Jarrah, four more in the Mount Hebron area, in Masra, in Kfar a-Dik, and an alleged case of attempted rape in Umm Salmona, near Bethlehem, that was revealed in Haaretz. Recently, a special forum was started by a group of women from leftist groups for the purpose of dealing and monitoring such incidents. “The objective is to learn the subject,” says one of the group’s members. “We want to develop tools and guidelines for creating an environment with fewer cases of harassment.”

France: Bat-wielding Muslim worshiper beats an elderly man to death in a mosque

A Muslim worshipper said to have psychological troubles entered a mosque in northern France and repeatedly beat two elderly men with a bat Friday, killing one and badly injuring the other, a Muslim leader and a police official said.

The assailant identified only as "Seddik" - his first name - carried out the attack in the tiny Ennour mosque in the city of Arras shortly after afternoon prayers, said Abdelkader Aoussedj, of Paris' main mosque.

A local police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of office policy, told The Associated Press that the suspect lived in Arras, was in his 30s, and had a police record for violence.

Palestinian teenager stabs a 19-year-old female soldier on the light rail in Jerusalem

A Palestinian teenager stabbed a 19-year-old female soldier on the light rail in Jerusalem Thursday morning, seriously wounding the woman before fleeing.

The attacker rode the train north until the Pisgat Ze’ev station, where he stood up and stabbed the woman, who was in uniform, several times before running away as the doors opened, said Dep.-Ch. Nissan Aderi, the commander of the police’s Zion Precinct.

This is the first terrorist attack on the light rail since it began carrying passengers in August. The suspect was caught around 11:30 a.m. at the Kalandiya crossing, located near the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood, trying to return to Palestinian Authority- controlled territory.

He admitted to carrying out the attack and was questioned by security forces. Investigators were trying to determine whether the teenager acted alone or was part of an organized terrorist group, National Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Police arrested a suspected terrorist in the northern city of Brescia early on Thursday who they believe may have been planning an attack on Milan's synagogue.

Jarmoune Mohamed, a 20-year-old Moroccan national who has lived in Italy since he was six, is also suspected of setting up secret Facebook pages providing training on making bombs and using weapons for budding terrorists.

Correlated investigations are being carried out in the United States and Britain and London police have arrested a woman suspected of being an accomplice of Mohamed in the synagogue plot.

Police said they found evidence in the man's home and on his computer that he has conducted a thorough inspection of Milan's synagogue, with information on the security measures used and the police who guard the building. They showed some of material they seized from his home to reporters.

Investigators added that they had intercepted messages in which the man talked about a "jihad mission".

Egypt: MB member praises proposed bill, based on the Qur'an, to crucify and mutilate criminals

The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter; Except for those who repent before they fall into your power: in that case, know that Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.

The People’s Assembly Proposals and Complaints Committee discussed in a meeting Tuesday a bill proposed by MP Adel Azzazy from the Salafi-oriented Nour Party that would apply Islamic law for certain crimes.

The proposed law calls for the application of “Heraba,” an Islamic penalty for criminal actions that include overt robbery, murder, forcible taking of property with a weapon and vandalizing public facilities.

The penalties according to Azzazy’s bill are execution in the case of murder, or cutting one arm and one leg from opposite sides of the culprit’s body in the cases of robbery and forcible taking of property. If the taking of possessions is accompanied by murder, the penalty would be death or crucifixion, to be determined by the judge.. . .
[The bill also stipulates] Policemen are entitled to treat felons with force after warning them, and are also entitled to shoot them dead.. . .
For murders, citizens affected by the crime should be given the options of retribution, receiving compensation or granting amnesty.

“This is God’s law and is not optional,” Azzazy said, commenting on his proposal. “The current penalties are not deterrent enough.”

MP Gamal Heshmat from the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party praised the bill. He said that under former People’s Assembly Speaker Sufi Abu Taleb, draft laws were adjusted to match Islamic Sharia but were later shelved intentionally.

Armed terrorist groups on Tuesday perpetrated a new massacre against innocents at Karm al-Louz neighborhood, killing 15 citizens, among them a woman with her 4 children after storming houses and looting them completely.

The competent authorities pursue those armed groups at al-Naziheen alley after they sabotaged, killed and mutilated bodies of civilians.

The authorities discovered one of the terrorists' dens, a place for filming the fabricated reports broadcast by the channels of bloodshed, al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya.

A popular Muslim cleric was questioned by the police on Monday about claims by 11 young men that he molested them years ago.

Despite the serious nature of the allegations, the cleric, identified only as H., had ignored other police summonses, saying his preaching schedule was too busy.. . .
[Sr. Comr] Riwanto said the police had already questioned the accusers and conducted psychological tests on seven who are still minors.. . .
Eleven young men, now in their late teens or early 20s have reported the cleric for sexually abusing them when they were still minors.

The boys were allegedly given “healing treatments” that included touching.. . .
The alleged offenses took place about eight years ago but were only recently reported. The 11 claim that H. told them that he needed to touch them to remove evil spirits.

The Jakarta Police have been criticized for dragging their feet on the investigation, but have defended themselves by saying the sensitive nature of the allegations required careful handling.

Finnish newspaper, the Helsingin Sanomat, promotes Iranian propaganda, says "Jews have it good in Iran"

HS paper setting Israel up for when it finally has to act.

Propaganda at its best. Vladimir Lenin would agree, the Soviets said Jews and other religious minorities had it great in the U.S.S.R. as well!

If not for Ville Similä and Markus Jokela, we would still be viewing the Iranian mullah run regime as a genocide promoting, religious minority abusing totalitarian regime. No doubt the Bahais will be relieved to hear that you both have cleared the matter up. No religious persecution in Iran, even though several Jewish schools in Teheran are forced to remain open on Saturdays..

Any novice journalist knows that when interviewing persecuted minorities within a tightly controlled authoritarian regime, one has to do so clandestinely, in order to get the real truth of how life actually is for them, and not the standard party line. It’s called the “fear factor”.

When the aim however, is to set the Jewish state up for a future series of highly negative, demonizing articles, especially after Israel is finally forced to launch its attack against a regime that has repeatedly sworn to wipe it from the face of the earth, then you can figure out their motives. It’s either that, or they are complete bloody imbeciles. I believe it to be a bit of both.

One of the central figures in the article is, Maurice Motamed, an Iranian Jew and former MP who, in his wikipedia bio, is noted for voicing his approval for the Iranian regime’s international policies in order to prove the Iranian Jewish community’s loyalty to the state.

Then there’s a female student who said she never has encountered an incident of anti-semitism, except from a professor who then was made to apologize to her as well as the university itself. Something really stinks here, and I mean a major load. But that doesn’t raise a single note of suspicion for the intrepid Finnish journalist team of Similä and Jokela, they got what they were looking for and they’re sticking to it.

A mosque near Brussels was the target Monday evening of an arson attack in which the imam died, Belgian authorities said late Monday.

One man was arrested — a Muslim who said he was born in 1978 — in the attack on the mosque in Anderlecht, a suburb of Brussels, the Belgian capital, said Jean-Marc Meilleur, a spokesman for the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office. AFP has more about the alleged radical:

Azzedine Laghmich, an official at the mosque, told AFP the attacker was “a Salafist,” who sprayed petrol inside the mosque before setting it alight and shouting Sunni slogans on his way out — cries related to the conflict in Syria.

“All the eyewitness accounts said so,” Laghmich added.

Isabelle Praile, another senior official in Belgium’s organised Muslim community, said the Rida mosque “had already been placed under police protection several years ago,” citing direct threats from members of the ultra-conservative Salafist movement.

“It seemed that this person showed up and pulled out a knife and an ax, and that he spread flammable products — petrol we assume — in order to start a fire and threaten the mosque occupants,” Meilleur said.

According to the Telegraph, the Rida Shiite mosque was one of the largest in the Belgian capital. The attack has practically destroyed the entire building.

This weekend’s battle between Gaza and southern Israel went about as “well” as such an exchange has ever gone, a fact at once encouraging and profoundly depressing. Zero Israeli casualties; extremely effective deployment of the Iron Dome missile-defense shield, which at one point had intercepted 27 of 32 rockets, and which ended up intercepting 44 rockets out of an approximate 160 fired; the deaths of 16 terrorists, including at least one crucial mastermind—and at a cost of only two civilian casualties. Mourn the dead Palestinian civilians—one was reportedly a 12-year-old—but also remember that it was the Israeli civilians who were actually being targeted—including the children that would have occupied the school in Be’er Sheva hit had they, along with 200,000 others, not spent yesterday indoors over precisely such fears.

The firing continued Monday with more than 30 rockets, with one hitting the city of Ashdod and another landing just 40 miles from Tel Aviv. Israel responded with new air strikes that killed two more terrorists and wounded a few dozen, including civilians.

Israel started the exchange in the sense of firing the first salvo. But that salvo was aimed at—and assassinated—a Popular Resistance Committees leader who bragged of kidnapping Gilad Shalit, allegedly planned last summer’s attack from Egypt that killed eight Israeli soldiers, and, according to Israel, was scheming another operation.

The terrorist armed gangs have kidnapped scores of civilians in the Syrian city of Homs, national news agency SANA reported Monday.

The gangs killed the men, mutilated their corpses and filmed them to be shown by media outlets.

“The footage of the corpses presented by some Satellite TV stations belong to the civilians, who were kidnapped by the terrorist armed groups,” SANA quoted a media source as saying.. . .

The media source added that the crimes were perpetrated by the armed terrorist groups and aired by al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya. This coincides with today's UN Security Council session , as to call for foreign interference in Syria.

The politician, Khush Dil Khan, escaped unhurt in the blast on the outskirts of Peshawar, the main city in the northwest.

Islamist militants are fighting a vicious war against Pakistani security forces in and around Peshawar, which lies close to border regions with Afghanistan where extremists hold sway. Many hundreds have been killed over the last few years.

India: Imam of mosque absconds after a father tells police he raped his 10-year-old daughter

The imam of a mosque at Namazgarh in under Hooghly Mogra police station went absconding after a van rickshaw owner complained to police that the cleric had allegedly raped his 10-year-old daughter.

In the complaint, the father Qurban Mollah said his daughter had broken down on Friday evening after suffering Sheikh Sarfuddin's brutality for days.

"My daughter used to would study Arabic at the mosque along with other children. Of late, she had become quiet and looked terrified when leaving home for lessons. I thought that it was perhaps because she was unable to cope with studies. But on Thursday evening, she broke down, unable to bear the torture any longer. She said the imam Sk Sarfuddin had been physically abusing her for several days," the father alleged.

UK: After Libya shame, memorial to Afghan dead and a wooden cross destroyed by vandals in Essex

A memorial garden for British troops killed in Afghanistan has been desecrated by vandals who struck at a military chapel in Essex.

A plaque in honour of seven soldiers who lost their lives in 2007 was smashed to pieces and a wooden cross destroyed.

News of the attack comes after The Mail on Sunday last week revealed how an armed mob in Libya had filmed themselves desecrating the war graves of more than 150 British servicemen at Benghazi.

The latest outrage happened in the memorial garden in the grounds of the chapel of The Royal Anglian Regiment in Warley, Brentwood.

The garden was built in honour of nine soldiers from the regiment who died during the same tour five years ago. Lance Corporal Darren George, a member of the regiment who was 22 when he became the first British casualty of the Afghan war in April 2002, has a plaque devoted to him inside the chapel.

Last night, his widow Sarah condemned the vandalism, which left pieces of the memorial scattered across the ground along with flowers from a wreath.

‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard,’ she said. ‘It’s disgusting that anybody would do something as nasty as that. I hope the police find whoever did it. The timing was just so callous.’

Essex Police last night confirmed that they were aware of the damage. Retired Royal Anglian Major Tony Jones, 59, who oversees the chapel, said: ‘The damage was mindless thuggery, as far as I can see. They snapped the plaque in half. I feel sad about it.

The program, which ran for one season from Nov. 13 to Jan. 8, focused on five Arab-American Muslim families living in Dearborn, Mich.

The show became embroiled in controversy in December, when Lowe's pulled its sponsorship of the program after it received complaints from a conservative family group which claimed the series "hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties."

Some conservative Muslims also said the cast members were not pious enough to adequately represent the Islamic community.

FBI officials say they have analyzed over 80,000 IEDs [improvised explosive devices] at TEDAC [The FBI’s Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center], but Mueller, testifying before the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday, said that the proposed budget cut could lead to a greater backlog in the analysis of devices, preventing timely fingerprint analysis of suspected and known terrorists.. . .
“I’ve got monies allocated to address that backlog,” Mueller added.
“If we’re cut, I can’t do that backlog and that enhances the risk that we will not have a fingerprint of an individual on an IED and that individual may get into Europe or may get into the United States.”

“That is less important than making certain we follow every lead on every potential terrorist in the United States,” Mueller continued. ” So I have to prioritize. But with the prioritization comes an enhanced risk.”

Spain: Imam follows the Qur'an and calls on his 1,500 strong congregation to beat misbehaving wives

A Spanish imam near Barcelona is under investigation after allegedly calling on the faithful to “discipline” errant wives using physical and psychological violence, police said on Tuesday.. . .

[During Friday prayer services] “He provided concrete examples of the manner in which wives should be beaten, how to isolate them inside the family home and how to deny them sexual relations,” said the police, saying they had received testimony to the effect from numerous witnesses.

Some 1,500 people usually attend Friday sermons by this particular imam in Terrassa, a city of some 200,000 residents in Spain’s northeast, which is home to a large Muslim community.

The human rights of terrorists, illegal immigrants and gypsies should all be given better protection in the UK, a report has said.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found 10 areas in the UK where public authorities "can improve human rights protections".

"Some groups which are socially marginalised or particularly vulnerable do not enjoy full protection of their rights," the report said.

The review criticised the Government's counter-terrorism powers, in particular the authority to hold suspected terrorists for up to 14 days without charge and the use of Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (Tpims) which replaced the controversial system of control orders.

The 14-day pre-charge detention was "considerably longer than the four days permitted for individuals charged with a criminal offence", the commission said.

US: 23 Somalis on trial in Tennessee for sex slavery of underage Somali and African-American girls

Twenty-three Somalis will go on trial this month in connection with operating a sex slavery ring that sold little girls into slavery in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Nasvhille, Tennessee; and other cities.

According to the Tennessean, the trial will be unusual because all the defendants will appear before judge and jury at the same time. Agents from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency collared the 30 Africans in November 2010.

The paper reported,

In an era when limited resources and risk aversion have resulted in a dramatic rise in the number of cases that end in plea agreements rather than jury trials, not even one of the 30 defendants in the case has agreed to plead guilty, setting the stage for a massive trial in downtown Nashville that is raising a variety of issues both legal and logistical.

Though the media has not mentioned it, the defendants are almost certainly Muslims. Somalia is a Muslim country.

According to ICE, local, state, and federal police in Nashville, Minneapolis, and St. Paul locked up 29 Somalis “who were listed in a federal indictment which was unsealed listing various charges, including sex trafficking juveniles and conspiring to sex traffic juveniles, obstruction of justice, perjury, auto theft and credit card fraud....”

The indictment results from an investigation that began in 2008 and alleges that the defendants are involved in or are associates of the following gangs which are connected to one another: the Somali Outlaws, the Somali Mafia, and the Lady Outlaws.

As well, ICE reported, “members and associates of the gangs transported underage Somali and African-American females from the Minneapolis area to Nashville for the purpose of having the females engage in sex acts for money and other items of value.”

Some of the girls were 13 years old or younger, the indictment alleged.

Yemen: Two suicide bombers and an attack of militants kill at least 35 servicemen

At least 35 servicemen died on Sunday as a result of two terrorist acts and an attack of militants in the south of Yemen, Reuters reports.

Two suicide bombers in a car filled with explosives blew themselves up at a security check-point of government troops in the city of Zinjibar. After the explosion militants attacked the positions of the government troops.

Militants’ attacks in the Abyan province have been going on since the end of May 2011.

Nigeria: Imam rapes his daughter's classmate because she had poor grades, tries to pay her off

A 15-year-old Junior Secondary School Student of Educational Legacy College, Ibadan, has been raped by a teacher because she had poor grades.

Isiaka Salimonu, 43, who teaches Arabic, allegedly promised to give Yetunde holy oil for prayers to improve her academic performance, and raped her when she came for the oil. Salimonu is also an Imam and regularly conducts Friday Jumat prayers in the local mosque.. . .
When school resumed on January 5, 2012, he sent somebody to call her. "He asked me why I didn’t go to the place he told me last time to wait for him or at the mosque, to collect the charm he promised me," said Yetunde. "He told me to wait for him at a bus-stop at about 4.00p.m. and I waited as directed. He came and told me the charm was in his friend’s house. I followed him and when we got to the house, we didn’t see his friend. He knocked on the door but nobody responded.

Later, he told me to follow him to collect the charm; and he took me to a small hut and asked me to remove my clothes. I refused, but he forcibly stripped me naked and thereafter, raped me. I started shouting for help. That was about 5.00p.m. I was angry and left. He gave me N2,000 but I rejected it. I also rejected the holy oil. When I got home, I reported the matter to my elder brother and it was later reported at the Olodo Police Station.

The suspect, whose daughter is a classmate of the victim, said he been wooing Yetunde since September last year. "I always noticed her whenever I was conducting Jumat for them every Friday," he said. "I have confessed to the police that I raped her. It was the devil that pushed me into this."

Samantha Lewthwaite, the latest "Naser Jason Abdo" to be exposed as a violent Islamic terrorist

For those who may not remember, Naser Jason Abdo is a US soldier who converted to Islam at the age of 17. He was granted conscientious objector status because he claimed his Muslim beliefs prevented him from fighting in Afghanistan. In 2009 he, like the Islamic apologist Arsalan Iftikhar, publicly denounced the Fort Hood massacre (in which the US Army major, Nidal Malik Hasan, murdered 13 people and wounded 30 others) as running "counter to what I believe in as a Muslim," and subsequently became an American-Muslim posterchild who received much media attention. Things went sour after he was charged with possessing child porn, leading him to go AWOL. Found with a large quantity of weapons and explosives materials, he was arrested in 2011 and admitted planning another similar attack on Fort Hood.

Samantha Lewthwaite (aka. Sherafiyah), the widow of 7/7 bomber Germaine (Jamal) Lindsay who detonated the bomb at London’s King’s Cross Tube station killing 26 people, seems to be the latest "moderate Muslim" to have received media attention, only to be ultimately unmasked as a Muslim terrorist. Like Jason Abdo, she converted to Islam at the age of 17. And like Jason Abdo, she publicly condemned the 7/7 bombings as ‘Abhorrent’ and said she dreaded the day when she would have to tell her own children "what their father did". However, she is now on the run from Kenyan authorities and is believed to be the main financier of a major terrorist cell affiliated to al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida-linked group in Somalia, that planned to mount a series of attacks on the Kenyan coastal resort of Mombasa during Christmas.

Samantha Lewthwaite is the middle-class soldier’s daughter who had two children by bomber Lindsay, the man responsible for detonating an explosive-filled rucksack on a Piccadilly Line Tube train at London’s King’s Cross in 2005, killing 26 of the 52 victims who died in the wave of attacks in the city that day.

You may recall that Miss Lewthwaite, now 28, would later give an ‘exclusive’ interview (for a reported fee of £30,000), condemning the atrocity. ‘Abhorrent,’ she called it.

She had no foreknowledge of her husband’s murderous plans, she said, claiming his mind was ‘poisoned’ by radical Islamic preachers.

Furthermore, she dreaded the day, she said, when she would have to tell her own children ‘what their father did’.

Should we be questioning her word now, since Samantha Lewthwaite is being hunted by Kenyan police after they discovered a bomb factory in one of the so-called safe houses in which the suspect is supposed to have lived in the coastal resort of Mombasa?

In December, police raided the hide-out in a crime-ridden ghetto notorious with Islamic fundamentalists after receiving a tip that an Al Qaeda-linked terror cell was planning to blow up hotels and shopping centres across the East African city over Christmas and New Year.

They discovered it was a ‘bank’ where the woman pictured in the passport handed out hundreds of thousands of dollar bills to her associates. The nondescript house was also a bomb-making factory, containing batteries, hydrogen peroxide and wires. Police initially said they would not confirm that the woman they were hunting was Miss Lewthwaite, as it could be a case of mistaken identity.

But they have now issued photographs of her to every border point.

A source said: ‘The police are hunting for Samantha Lewthwaite. It is a huge manhunt.

‘The woman is said to have been the main financier of a major terror cell, which extended into Somalia. She had lived there and also ran bomb-making workshops there.

‘Her education, and the fact she was a white Western woman, meant she was in a good position to do this. We do not know where she is now, but she has fled with her children. We think she may be in Malindi.’

Update:

Suspicions have grown that Muslim convert Samantha Lewthwaite, now known as the White Widow due to her fugitive status in East Africa, was actually one of the masterminds behind the killings in 2005. Immediately after the explosions which murdered 52 people on the London transport system, she said she "abhorred" the actions of her dead husband Jermaine Lindsay, whose bomb detonated near King's Cross on the Piccadilly Line.

However, the middle-class Muslim convert from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, has since risen to a senior status in the Al Shabaab movement in Kenya and Somalia, a terror group affiliated to Al Qaeda.

Believed to be behind its funding and propaganda, the 29-year-old has assumed cult status among her jihadi followers for her characteristic street-slang rants at non-Muslim "kuffar".

An arrest warrant was issued for her last May after she failed to appear in court in Kenya to face bomb-making charges.

Her alleged co-conspirators are two other Britons, her second husband Habib Saleh Ghani, from Hounslow, west London and Jermaine Grant, from east London, who remains in custody in Kenya after his arrest in December 2011.

At the time of Grant's arrest, he reportedly told police that Lewthwaite was "the boss".

They are all accused of possessing chemicals and "conspiring to improvise an explosive device with the intent to cause harm to innocent civilians".

The chemicals found in a raid on her home in Kenya in December 2010 included acetone and hydrogen peroxide, two of the key components of the terror attacks in London eight years ago.

A security source said: "That raises the prospect that Lewthwaite may have been more closely involved in the 7/7 attacks than previously thought. It might also explain her seniority as a top-rank Al Qaeda leader and the suspected chief financier of Al Shabaab."

Lewthwaite is also a suspect for a grenade attack at a hotel bar in Mombasa, Kenya, in which three people were killed last June while watching an England football match on television during Euro 2012.

She has boasted of rearing children to become Mujahideen terrorists and is now one of the world's most-wanted women.

She is thought to be behind a "press office" Twitter account for the Muslim Youth Centre, which distributes announcements exhorting violent jihad and has even called for the assassination of a fellow jihadi, US-born Omar Hammami, also known as Al Mansoor Al-Amiriki who angered former colleagues by saying violent Islamic struggle was failing in Kenya.

When confronted on Twitter last month by a journalist who suggested that the @MYC_Press account was being operated by Lewthwaite, the response was: "She's back in Luton :). In Bedford we take no prisoners."

Although there is no evidence which proves Lewthwaite was involved in the horrific attacks in Nairobi which left dozens dead, Kenya's foreign minister has said a British woman was among the Islamist assailants.

And yesterday a woman who was inside the shopping centre said she locked eyes with an AK-47-wielding ‘pale-skinned woman’ with long dark hair – the same as British Muslim convert Lewthwaite – as she opened fire from a balcony.

Amazingly, the woman, who gave her name only as Caroline, escaped unharmed as Islamists stormed the Westgate shopping centre.

She said: ‘She was high up but not far from me, close enough that I saw her looking along the floor where I was until she saw me.

‘She stopped and aimed at me and then opened fire. All of the bullets did not hit me, I don’t know how that happened.

‘She stopped firing at me for a moment and looked away and I jumped up and ran around a corner and that’s how I escaped.

‘She had pale skin and long black hair, and was wearing a baggy black top. I can’t remember very much, but I remember she had pale skin.’

A senior Kenyan anti-terror officer last night revealed that police had received many witness accounts of a female attacker resembling the widow of 7/7 bomber Jermaine Lindsay.

He added: ‘We believe that she was involved in the attack. We cannot doubt the eyewitnesses who say they saw her commanding the attackers.’

Kenya foreign minister Amina Mohamed added: ‘The Briton was a woman... who has done this many times before.’

A Twitter account thought to belong to the militant group al-Shabaab, which tweeted their cruel attack, also claimed that Lewthwaite ‘commanded’ the attack.

A post said: ‘We have received permission to disclose the involvement of Samantha Lewthwaite aka sherafiyah [her Islamic name], she successfully overseered [sic] the mission.’...

Ms Lewthwaite, 29, is the widow of one of the four suicide bombers who attacked London on 7 July 2005.

Known colloquially as the "white widow", she has been linked with Somali militant Islamist group al-Shabab.

Interpol did not link the warrant to the Nairobi shopping complex attack that left at least 67 dead.. . .An Interpol statement said she was "wanted by Kenya on charges of being in possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony dating back to December 2011".

The Interpol alert, known as a "Red Notice", requires member countries to detain the suspect pending extradition procedures.. . .She is the widow of Germaine Lindsay, one of the four bombers involved in the 7 July terror attacks in London in 2005 in which 52 people were killed and hundreds more injured....

A shocking video that appears to show Libyan rebels torturing a group of sub-Saharan African detainees has appeared on YouTube.

The footage shows a dozen or so men - presumably captured mercenaries suspected of fighting for the toppled government of Muammur Gaddafi last year - held in what looks like a caged zoo enclosure.

They each have their hands tied behind their back and are sat on the cage's dirty floor.

More objectionably, each has the old Libyan flag stuffed into his mouth.

While a crowd of men gather round the enclosure jeering, their prisoners are made to hop on the spot.

The man filming the scene, who remains off-camera, can be heard shouting: 'Eat the flag, you dog. Patience you dog, patience. God is great.'. . .
Up to 6,000 detainees are estimated to remain in brigade facilities, while the Ministry of Justice has taken charge of eight detention centres holding 2,382 people.

The figures were revealed to the UN Security Council by Ian Martin, the UN special envoy for Libya.

Many of the detainees are sub-Saharan Africans whom their captors accuse of being Gaddafi mercenaries, based in some cases purely on the fact that they have darker skin.

The UN human rights agency and aid groups have accused the brigades of torturing detainees during Libya's nine-month civil war.

Forty-seven people charged with terrorism are expected to face trial in Kazakhstan's western city of Atyrau.

Prosecutor-General's Office official Lazzat Nurmaghambetova told journalists in Atyrau on March 2 that the suspects, all men, had been charged with creating a terrorist group and preparing or carrying out explosions in the city.

Nurmaghambetova said investigations of the suspects had been completed, and that criminal cases had been compiled ahead of expected trials.

Two explosions hit Atyrau last October, and one suspected suicide bomber was killed.

A group called Jund al-Khilafah (Soldiers of the Caliphate), a "brigade" of Islamist fighters based on the Afghan-Pakistani border, claimed credit for the Atyrau bombings in a statement released on jihadist forums.

Bangladesh: Imam arrested for raping a fourth-grade primary school student

An imam has been arrested on the charge of raping a fourth-grade student at Tangibari upazila in Munshiganj district.

The accused was identified as Mohammad Abrarul Haque, 35, the imam of Dhamaran Jame Mosque.

Quoting locals, officer in-charge of the Tangibari Police Station Shahidul Islam told bdnews24.com that Abrarul violated the girl in his room adjacent to the mosque when she came to take tuition in Arabic from him on Thursday morning.

US: Heavily Muslim populated city of Dearborn pays for violating rights of non-Muslim

The city of Dearborn has paid $100,000 in legal fees to attorneys for a Christian evangelist whose free-speech rights were violated at a popular Arab-American street festival.

Dearborn has a large Muslim population and one of the nation’s biggest concentrations of people with roots in the Arab world.

The festival had offered George Saieg of Anaheim, Calif., a free booth in 2010, but city police in barred him and his allies from freely walking sidewalks with literature to convert Muslims to Christianity.

Chief Ron Haddad said he was just controlling foot traffic, but a federal appeals court said the city violated the First Amendment.

The court says allowing the evangelists on the festival’s perimeter wasn’t good enough.

As the prevailing party, Saieg was entitled to legal fees and other costs from Dearborn. His lawyers say the money was paid last week.